Firefox/Planning/2011-10-26

« previous week | index | next week »

Planning Meeting Details

• Wednesdays – 11:00am PDT, 18:00 UTC
• Mountain View Offices: Warp Core Conference Room
• Toronto Offices: Fin du Monde Conference Room
• irc.mozilla.org #planning for backchannel
• (the developer meeting takes place on Tuesdays)

Video/Teleconference Details – NEW

• 650-903-0800 or 650-215-1282 x92 Conf# 95312 (US/INTL)
• 1-800-707-2533 (pin 369) Conf# 95312 (US)
• Vidyo Room: Warp Core
• Vidyo Guest URL

<script>if (window.showTocToggle) { var tocShowText = “show”; var tocHideText = “hide”; showTocToggle(); } </script>

Actions from Last Week

• None!

Schedule & Progress on Upcoming Releases

Firefox Desktop

Release (3.6, 7)

Beta (8)

• We’re two weeks from ship. (Nov 8)
  • Exposes prefs for tabs on demand (bartab-like functionality)
  • Twitter search
  • Remove the “you need to restart for your update” prompt for most users.
  • Prompt users to clean out unrequested 3rd party add-ons
  • Protect users from future unrequested 3rd party add-ons

Aurora (9)

Nightly (10)

• Making good progress on add-ons compatible by default and silent update.
  • Feature apply update on shutdown completed security review

Firefox Mobile

7

8

9

Firefox Sync

Add-on Builder

• Release today @ 2pm
• Q4 goals on-track for completion
• Will soon be generating a must-do bug list for the Q1 1.0public release

Add-on SDK

Release (1.2.1 -> Firefox 7, 8)

• Our first “Jetscramble!”
  • Last Wed. immediately after this meeting a community member found a critical error with version number & AMO support
  • We quickly corrected, spun up 1.2.1RC1 and tested
  • Released 1.2.1 before the end of the day

Stabilization (1.3 -> Firefox 8, 9)

• Spun up 1.3beta1 yesterday – please give it a test

Development (1.4 -> Firefox 9, 10)

• Last week we updated the minVersion to 9.0 and found that we broke other folk’s usage and testing
• Myk wrote up the situation and presented a proposal Thread Here
• to wit: Will reset dev-tree minVersion to 7.*

Feedback Summary

Desktop

Nothing new

• Same issues (pretty much) as last week
• A few (hundred) people got a bad 64-bit flash update but a reinstall (of flash) fixes it.

Mobile

No updates, re-planning for native UI and ramping up support content for tablet UI.

UX & User Research

Market Insights

Platforms

Android

• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich released, along with SDK v14. Notable API and support changes include:
  • Support for Matroska video containers, WEBP images
  • Classes to set region for focus, auto-focus and light auto-metering, and the ability to disable the camera entirely
  • Peer-to-peer wifi connections
  • Accessibility improvements: explore-by-touch, view callbacks
  • New framework to ease creation of new spellcheckers
  • ACTION_MANAGE_NETWORK_USAGE action allows users to adjust data usage settings for apps
  • New VPN Service allows apps to build their own VPN
  • New device sensors TYPE_AMBIENT_TEMPERATURE, TYPE_RELATIVE_HUMIDITY and improvements to synthetic gravity, rotation, and linear accelerator sensors
  • Hardware acceleration for all windows is enabled by default
  • Webkit updated to version 534.40, font support for Indic, Ethiopic, Georgian and Armenian fonts
  • Browser has updated V8 engine and Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) enhancements are available for handsets, including HTML media capture, device orientation, and CSS 3D transformations

Chrome

• Chrome v15 stable was released, along with a UI update to the Chrome web app store. The major promoted feature are UI improvements to the tab pane and better integration with the app store. In the app store, reviewers’ Google+ pages are linked to each review.

Webkit/Chromium

• Chromium is now up to v17. Recent notable commits include:
  • detailed timing (anonymous opt-in) instrumentation for downloads
  • basic support for HTTP pipelining
  • now supports playing of videos greater than 2GB in size
  • changes to boxing/unboxing of double ints in the JIT changed, delivering a 29% speed improvement on Kraken

Opera

• New Opera Labs alpha release
  • demonstrates “Opera Reader” support for CSS Generated Content for Paged Media — Paged Presentations module
  • HTML5 API support for getUserMedia API to allow camera input in the browser
  • Full hardware acceleration for all WebGL graphics, currently only with OpenGL, with DirectX coming in future

Amazon Silk

• Amazon, via MarkMonitor, registered amazonsilkforandroid.com, amazonsilkformac.com, and amazonsilkforpc.com, increasing speculation that, like the Kindle app, that the Silk browser will be available for other platforms. The company is currently advertising 10 open developer positions for Amazon Silk.

Mobile

Summary below, full update here and in your inbox.

• Nokia launched its first WP7 phones, the Nokia Lumia 800 and 710, which feature Internet Explorer 9 mobile and will be released beginning with November in 6 European countries and several countries in Asia

• Android overpassed iOS on app downloads, but lags behind on apps/user ratio

• Mobotap released Dolphin HD 7.0 for Android, featuring preferences, bookmarks and gestures syncing through Dolphin Connect between instances of the browser on Android

• Opera signed partnerships with MTN, a carrier active in 21 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and Smart Communications in the Philippines

• ARM introduced its next generation chips, the A7 family, and heterogeneous multiprocessing, a technique to balance processor performance for extended battery life

• NFC and mobile payments are making strides, with the Singapore government engaged in developing infrastructure and Mastercard extending its contactless payment system, Pay Pass, to mobile phones

Marketing, Press & Public Reaction

Questions, Comments, FYI

• Any word on rescheduling the major update advertisement for 3.6 users?
• Any news about the ESR?

Actions this week